If you've never done any email marketing before, here are some quick tips for starting and growing your permission-based email list.

Getting Prepared
Before you can start collecting emails and sending newsletters, there are a few things you'll want to plan:

* Consider how much time you really have to send emails. Don't be over ambitious, then lose steam later. If you can't send emails every week or month, there's nothing wrong with sending it every quarter. Set your expectations low at first, until you get the hang of sending regular campaigns (this is one reason MailChimp doesn't charge monthly fees).
* What will you call your newsletter? If you're just starting off, and you're not sure how much time you'll have to devote to email marketing, call it your "Quarterly Update" or something like that. At MailChimp, we have a "tips and tricks" newsletter that we call "The MonkeyWrench." You can keep it simple, or create a whole look and feel for your newsletters.
* You may want to setup different mailing lists. Don't just assume someone that wants a quarterly newsletter about your company also wants daily email coupons. Setup different lists for people with different interests. Example lists might include: Monthly Newsletter, Special Offers, Media Relations, Internal Announcements, and Letter from the President. You can setup as many lists as you want in MailChimp.
* Who will your emails come from? Will it come from "Acme Banana Marketing Department?" or from "John Smith"? Some experts recommend making your newsletters personal. For example, use "I" more than "we." Whatever you decide to do, you'll want to setup an email address for your "reply-to:" field in MailChimp. If you don't have an IT group who can do this for you, you can probably do it yourself through your ISP's admin area (or wherever you bought your company's domain name and setup your email addresses). Hint: you don't have to setup a full blown email account. Most ISPs offer free "email alias" accounts, where all messages are simply forwarded to one of your existing accounts. For example, you can setup "newsletter@acme-bananas.com" to forward emails to "john@acme-bananas.com"
* One thing that really gets people to sign up for lists: free prizes. But this is a permission-based email list, and you really want to send to people who truly want to hear from you. So there's no need to get extravagant. Give away a company t-shirt or something simple like that. If you give away a Playstation 3, you'll attract tons of useless signups (who will later forget opting in, and report you for spamming).
* Create an "Email Marketing Calendar" for yourself. Just a bulletpoint list of email newsletters you'll send this year. Each month has different holidays, which means different useful tips you could send to your customers. You could even go ahead and create the entire year's worth of email newsletters in MailChimp, and save them all as drafts. You never know when an idea for your Thanksgiving newsletter will hit you.

Setup Your Lists

* Sign up for a MailChimp account (free), and setup a list. We'll walk you through the process with our 5-step wizard. You can setup infinitely many lists on MailChimp with infinitely many members. Some people wonder if there's a catch. Nope. Your lists are safe with us, and always kept private. We just charge you whenever you actually send campaigns to your list (about a penny or three per recipient).
* For every list you setup in MailChimp, we'll automatically generate a signup form that you can add to your website (we'll provide all the sample code you need).
* Jot down the URL of your signup form. Invite all your customers to go to that URL and subscribe (did you offer a free prize?).

Practice Signing Up and Opting Out

* Practice. You might want to add yourself to your list, and get some co-workers to sign up too. Send some practice emails, and have people unsubscribe from your list. See how the entire opt-in, opt-out process works.
* You might find that you need to change some wording on your welcome emails and thank-you screens.
* Try replying to your newsletter, too. Make sure your reply-to email address works.

Start Collecting Addresses

* Send out personal, one-to-one emails to all your clients, and ask them to please signup to your newsletter.
* Link to your signup form from every page of your website (or embed the form).
* Place a link to your email signup form in your email signature (ask everyone in your company to do it too)
* Link to your signup form in all the invoices your company sends
* Post free whitepapers or helpful articles on your site, and ask people to "signup for our email tips" on the landing page (and don't forget to place a link inside the whitepaper).
* In your "Contact Us" form on your website, add a checkbox to "signup for our newsletter"
* Add an "opt-in for our newsletter" checkbox in your e-commerce checkout page. You can link your shopping cart to a MailChimp list via our API.

Send Your First Email

* Once your list is built up a little, you can send your first campaign.
* Coming up with content for your first-ever newsletter can be hard. Here are some ideas for you:
o Conduct a poll, using an online survey tool like SurveyMonkey.com (no relation to MailChimp). SurveyMonkey is simple and affordable. Build an online survey, and it'll generate a link that you can insert into your emails.
o Showcase one of your customers (Customer of the month) or introduce your audience to a member of your team.
o Provide some useful tips for your customers
o Start an "Ask the Expert" column, and answer a common question you get from customers
o Got any whitepapers you can link to from your website?
o You can have a little fun, too. Include a funny photo, joke, or story somewhere in the newsletter. Show them you're human too.
* Whenever you build your HTML email newsletters, you can get nice, high-quality stock photos for $1 each at websites like istockphoto.com and luckyoliver.com.

Check Your Reports

After you send your first campaign, you should check your stats.

* How many people opened your email? Your first email campaign will show something really high, like 60-80% opens. But that number will level out to something like 20-30% average over time.
* How many people clicked?
* What kinds of links did people click the most? How-to links? Fun links? Informative article links? Learn what your audience likes.
* Check your bouncebacks, too.
* In general, you'll want to get a feel for your overall stats. Learn what your "normal" open, click, and bounce rates are. Sometimes, you'll see big spikes or dips in opens, and you'll want to investigate what caused it. You can't do that without knowing what your average is.

If you're new to email marketing, you're probably excited about sending out lots of emails to your customers. But before you dive right in and start "blasting out campaigns," we've put together a list of common mistakes that we see "beginners" and "rookies" make when they first get into email marketing...

Mistake: Not understanding the definition of spam

If you stumble upon a website, and you think the president of that company could use your services, you can send her a personally written email introducing yourself. That's not spam. That's what email is for. On the other hand, if you "stumble" upon 50 websites (or hire an intern to "stumble" upon 50 websites for you), and you gather the emails of 50 presidents into a list and blast an unsolicited email out to all of them at once, that's spam. Yes, even if you think the email is relevant to them.

Spam is sending bulk, unsolicited email.

If you find yourself struggling with this definition, trust us. Email marketing is not for you. You're going to find yourself struggling through all kinds of blacklisting, spam filtering, reputation, and deliverability problems. It's not worth it. Only send to people who gave you permission to email them. Email's for staying in touch with customers and people you know. Use other forms of marketing to "get the word out" to people who don't know you yet.

Mistake: Assuming You Still Have Permission

Some people think, "This is a list of customers who have purchased something from my store, so I have a right to send them email." But how would you like it if the owner of that 7-11 store, where you bought a gallon of milk three years ago, showed up at your door? You'd call the cops, wouldn't you?

So if you suddenly send a customer (who purchased something from you 2 years ago, and never heard from you since) an email newsletter out of the blue, how do you expect that customer to react? They'd call the SpamCops. Or, they'd click the "Report Spam" button, or "This is Junk" button in their email program. Know what happens next? A complaint gets sent to their ISP, along with a copy of your email. If they get enough complaints, they'll start blocking all future emails from you, and all future emails that include your company name in it (even if you didn't send the message!).

Just because someone's a customer, it doesn't mean he wants your email marketing. A customer list is a good start, though. You can email them, and politely ask them if they'd like to subscribe to your newsletters, or to subscribe for "special email offers." If you don't even have a customer list to start with, click here for some tips on growing a permission list.

Mistake: Confusing "Transactional" emails with "Email Marketing"

Got a list of customers who have purchased products from your e-commerce store? They'll be expecting email receipts, and email shipping notifications. Those are "transactional" emails. By the way, those emails should be sent from your own server.

When you send email newsletters, coupons, and promotions, those are "marketing" or "commercial" emails. The rules are different with commercial email. If you were to send "commercial email" to a list of people without their permission, that's "unsolicited bulk email," otherwise known as spam. Understand where that line is drawn, because if you cross it, you can expect a call from the FTC for violating their CAN-SPAM law.

Mistake: Being in a rush

The biggest mistakes happen when marketers "have to get this campaign out yesterday!" They don't do the proper design and coding. They don't think through the content. They don't plan their subject lines (perhaps the most important factor in your open rate!). They don't make sure their list is clean, and totally opt-in. They ask the sales team, "Hey everyone, I'm blasting out an email. Gimme all your contact lists!" What happens next? Broken emails go out to lots of people who never opted in, who forgot who you are, don't remember ever signing up for your emails, or who haven't heard from you in years. So what do they do? They click the "this is junk" button in their email program (studies show that anywhere from 10%-30% of recipients have done this, even to emails they requested, thinking it was the only effective way to "unsubscribe" from a list). Then what happens? Alerts get sent to their ISPs, who in turn blacklist the sender for spamming.

Slow down. Take a deep breath. Email marketing is not the same as sending a quick email to a buddy. It takes a good amount of planning, testing, and measuring. You should never be in a rush when it comes to email marketing. Email marketing's about relationships with customers. You don't rush relationships.

Mistake: Assuming people remember who you are

We've seen some marketers who created nice email signup forms a long time ago, and are only just now getting around to sending emails. Even though they responsibly acquired every recipient's permission before sending, those recipients forgot signing up. So when they suddenly get a full blown email newsletter "out of the blue," they report the sender for spamming. This happens way more often than you think. A lot of email experts say that permission goes stale after only 6 months. If you're not regularly contacting your list, assume the old emails have already forgotten you. You'll need to send them a "remember me?" email. Here's some information on how to do that, and here's a real life example of a good re-introduction campaign.

Mistake: Purchasing email lists

By now, everyone should know better than to buy a list of "30 million opt-in emails" via some sketchy piece of spam they got from some 3rd world country. That's pretty obvious. But there are people out there who still believe that if you "pay good money" for a list, and the seller says it's "opt-in" then it must be spam-free. The first thing you need to know is that we don't care who sold you the list. It's not allowed on MailChimp. MailChimp is only for sending to customers who opted-in with you. The second thing you need to know is that "opt-in" means absolutely nothing if they didn't opt-in with you. If someone "opted-in" for emails from a real estate website, that doesn't mean they want emails from every single real estate agent in the city. Before you purchase any lists, make sure you understand how the list was told what they were opting-in to. Then, don't use that list on MailChimp. Ever.
Mistake: Not double-checking your client's list before sending to it

This one mostly applies to agencies sending on behalf of their clients. We've seen some people send email marketing campaigns to lists that are obviously not permission-based. You're breaking our terms of use, and the CAN-SPAM law when you do that. Yes, you can be held liable for spam when sending on behalf of someone else. Did you build a website for a local dry cleaner? Did they ask you to handle their email marketing "e-blast" too? Ask them how they got the list, and if it's permission based or not. If it's a small shop, but their list is 25,000 recipients, use some common sense. If you send a campaign for a client to a bad list, they'll get tons of spam complaints, and we'll be forced to shut down their account. That doesn't look good for you or your client. Always ask them how they got their lists. You know when something's fishy.

Mistake: Thinking "BLAST" instead of "Relationship"

We always cringe when someone asks us if we can help them "blast" an email out to people. For one, the word "blast" should only be used for missiles and tanks. Not permission marketing. Secondly, when people say "blast," it usually means they think email is just a way to shoot out a bunch of emails, whether people want to hear from them or not. Email is all about getting permission from customers, sending them stuff they want to read, and listening to their feedback (either directly from them, or via open and click reports). You don't just blast and walk away. It's a long term relationship.

Mistake: Writing content like a used car salesman

Since email can be so affordable, it's often the first attempt at "real" marketing that small businesses make. Unfortunately, small businesses aren't always experts when it comes to writing good content. Instead of thinking, "Hmm, how would XYZ company write this email?" you should stop and ask, "Hmm, what would my customers find useful in my email?" Don't use pushy sales copy, like "BUY NOW!!!!" or "LIMITED TIME OFFER!!!" In email, using ALL CAPS is the equivalent of screaming at the top of your lungs. It's obnoxious. Spam filters will penalize you for screaming, using pushy sales copy, using bright red fonts, too many exclamation points, and other spammy content. For more information, read "How Spam Filters Think"

Mistake: Not testing your campaign in different email programs

HTML emails look different, depending on which email program you use to view it. Just because it looks good in the preview window, or when you send a test to yourself, it doesn't mean it'll look like that for all your recipients. You really need to setup a few accounts with free email services like Yahoo!, MSN, Hotmail, and Gmail. If possible, setup "home accounts" like with AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, and Roadrunner. Test on different computers and operating systems, like Macs and PCs. If you don't have the budget to build test computers (who does?) just enlist a few volunteers at the office, or family and friends. Send them tests, and ask if they can tell you if the email looked weird in their programs. You might want to try MailChimp's Inbox Inspector tool. You click one button, and we'll give you screenshots of your campaign in all the major email programs, and we test it in all the major spam filters.

Mistake: Using an unrecognizable "From" or "Subject" line

When you open your email program, there's always a lot of spam waiting for you, right? How do you quickly sift through the junk? You look at From: fields and Subject lines. Your company name should be in your From: field, and, if possible, work it into your Subject line too. Make your email instantly recognizable. If you put your personal name in the from: field, and use a subject line like, "Free Shipping for Mother's Day!" they'll just think it's another piece of spam.

Mistake: Bad first impression

What do you do when you meet someone new? You shake his hand, and you introduce yourself. So why do so many newbie marketers send their very first email campaign to their customers with subject lines, like "AMAZING OFFER INSIDE! OPEN NOW!"

You never get a 2nd chance to make a good first impression. When people sign up for your email newsletter, send them a "Welcome Email." It should introduce yourself to them, let them know what kind of content you'll be sending, and how often to expect it. Other things you might include in your welcome email include:

* A link to your online archive of email newsletters (so they can see past issues)
* A request for them to add you to their address book, or trusted senders list (so you won't get accidentally spam filtered)
* Your contact information

Mistake: Thinking you can design your own HTML emails

Desiging and coding HTML emails is not easy. If you can't code web pages "from scratch" (in a plain old fashioned text editor) you cannot code HTML email. You have to be an expert at HTML coding, and you have to know all the rules. That way, you'll know which rules to break in order to make HTML emails work. If you have no idea what the difference is between inline CSS and embedded CSS, how will you understand that embedded CSS only works if it's embedded below the < BODY> tag? Furthermore, how will you understand that webmail clients strip all CSS, unless it's inline? If your only experience coding HTML is from clicking "Export as Web Page" from Microsoft Word, don't try to code your own HTML email. Use our built-in templates. They take into consideration all the insane little details that you have to know in order to make HTML emails work in all the major email programs. Plus, they're beautiful, and can be customized to match any brand.

Customize and personalize it for maximum impact

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